Seed Storytelling: Growing Food as Cultural and Ecological Resilience in Asian American Communities

For many communities in the Asian American diaspora impacted by colonial legacies of the U.S., there is an understanding that healing and wellness are practiced on the community level. Practices of collective care have been found through growing and sharing nourishing food and plants, which have the ability to ground communities in their sense of home and family. This project looks historically at Asian American relationships to settler colonialism and agricultural labor, and then turns to how small-scale Asian American farmers and Asian immigrant gardeners are practicing community-based care by saving and stewarding seed varieties that are meaningful in their own contexts. These seeds preserve and represent memory, identity, and livelihood that are important for biodiversity and community health. Ultimately, seeds are keepers of culture and family histories; they have the ability to hold sacred stories that can tell us about our lineages and who we are. Cultivating diasporic Asian seeds can root down a sense of place for Asian American communities and facilitate land-based healing, as well as embed people in intergenerational relationships of care. These implications are intrinsically linked to the health of Asian American communities, as growing familiar food can bring a better understanding of self, collective commitment to one another, and the places we inhabit

Measuring Vastus Medialis Cross-Sectional Area with Panoramic Ultrasound Over Time

Panoramic ultrasound detected a statistically significant decrease in the VM CSA of participants after 70 days of bedrest without exercise.https://knowledgeconnection.mainehealth.org/lambrew-retreat-2021/1030/thumbnail.jp

A Maternal High-Fat, High-Sucrose Diet Has Sex-Specific Effects on Fetal Glucocorticoids with Little Consequence for Offspring Metabolism and Voluntary Locomotor Activity in Mice

Maternal overnutrition and obesity during pregnancy can have long-term effects on offspring physiology and behaviour. These developmental programming effects may be mediated by fetal exposure to glucocorticoids, which is regulated in part by placental 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (11β-HSD) type 1 and 2. We tested whether a maternal high-fat, high-sucrose diet would alter expression of placental 11β-HSD1 and 2, thereby increasing fetal exposure to maternal glucocorticoids, with downstream effects on offspring physiology and behaviour. C57BL/6J mice were fed a high-fat, high-sucrose (HFHS) diet or a nutrient-matched low-fat, no-sucrose control diet prior to and during pregnancy and lactation. At day 17 of gestation, HFHS dams had ~20% lower circulating corticosterone levels than controls. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between maternal diet and fetal sex for circulating corticosterone levels in the fetuses, whereby HFHS males tended to have higher corticosterone than control males, with no effect in female fetuses. However, placental 11β-HSD1 or 11β-HSD2 expression did not differ between diets or show an interaction between diet and sex. To assess potential long-term consequences of this sex-specific effect on fetal corticosterone, we studied locomotor activity and metabolic traits in adult offspring. Despite a sex-specific effect of maternal diet on fetal glucocorticoids, there was little evidence of sex-specific effects on offspring physiology or behaviour, although HFHS offspring of both sexes had higher circulating corticosterone at 9 weeks of age. Our results suggest the existence of as yet unknown mechanisms that mitigate the effects of altered glucocorticoid exposure early in development, making offspring resilient to the potentially negative effects of a HFHS maternal diet

Hypothesis-driven genome-wide association studies provide novel insights into genetics of reading disabilities

Peer reviewe

Genome-wide analyses of individual differences in quantitatively assessed reading- and language-related skills in up to 34,000 people

The use of spoken and written language is a fundamental human capacity. Individual differences in reading- and language-related skills are influenced by genetic variation, with twin-based heritability estimates of 30 to 80% depending on the trait. The genetic architecture is complex, heterogeneous, and multifactorial, but investigations of contributions of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were thus far underpowered. We present a multicohort genome-wide association study (GWAS) of five traits assessed individually using psychometric measures (word reading, nonword reading, spelling, phoneme awareness, and nonword repetition) in samples of 13,633 to 33,959 participants aged 5 to 26 y. We identified genome-wide significant association with word reading (rs11208009, P = 1.098 x 10(-8)) at a locus that has not been associated with intelligence or educational attainment. All five reading-/language-related traits showed robust SNP heritability, accounting for 13 to 26% of trait variability. Genomic structural equation modeling revealed a shared genetic factor explaining most of the variation in word/nonword reading, spelling, and phoneme awareness, which only partially overlapped with genetic variation contributing to nonword repetition, intelligence, and educational attainment. A multivariate GWAS of word/nonword reading, spelling, and phoneme awareness maximized power for follow-up investigation. Genetic correlation analysis with neuroimaging traits identified an association with the surface area of the banks of the left superior temporal sulcus, a brain region linked to the processing of spoken and written language. Heritability was enriched for genomic elements regulating gene expression in the fetal brain and in chromosomal regions that are depleted of Neanderthal variants. Together, these results provide avenues for deciphering the biological underpinnings of uniquely human traits.Peer reviewe

Genome-wide analyses of individual differences in quantitatively assessed reading- and language-related skills in up to 34,000 people

The use of spoken and written language is a fundamental human capacity. Individual differences in reading- and language-related skills are influenced by genetic variation, with twin-based heritability estimates of 30-80%, depending on the trait. The genetic architecture is complex, heterogeneous, and multifactorial, but investigations of contributions of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were thus far underpowered. We present a multicohort genome-wide association study (GWAS) of five traits assessed individually using psychometric measures: word reading, nonword reading, spelling, phoneme awareness, and nonword repetition, in samples of 13,633 to 33,959 participants aged 5-26 years. We identified genome-wide significant association with word reading (rs11208009, p=1.098 x 10-8) at a locus that has not been associated with intelligence or educational attainment. All five reading-/language-related traits showed robust SNP-heritability, accounting for 13-26% of trait variability. Genomic structural equation modelling revealed a shared genetic factor explaining most variation in word/nonword reading, spelling, and phoneme awareness, which only partially overlapped with genetic variation contributing to nonword repetition, intelligence and educational attainment. A multivariate GWAS of word/nonword reading, spelling, and phoneme awareness maximized power for follow-up investigation. Genetic correlation analysis of multivariate GWAS results with neuroimaging traits identified association with the surface area of the banks of the left superior temporal sulcus, a brain region linked to processing of spoken and written language. Heritability was enriched for genomic elements regulating gene expression in the fetal brain, and in chromosomal regions that are depleted of Neanderthal variants. Together, these results provide new avenues for deciphering the biological underpinnings of uniquely human traits

Registered replication report: a large multilab cross-cultural conceptual replication of Turri, Buckwalter, & Blouw (2015)

According to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge (JTB), a person can only truly know something if they have a belief that is both justified and true (i.e., knowledge is justified true belief). This account was challenged by Gettier (1963), who argued that JTB does not explain knowledge attributions in certain situations, later called Gettier-type cases, wherein a protagonist is justified in believing something to be true, but their belief was only correct due to luck. Lay people may not attribute knowledge to protagonists with justified but only luckily true beliefs. While some research has found evidence for these so-called Gettier intuitions (e.g., Machery et al., 2017a), Turri et al. (2015) found no evidence that participants attributed knowledge in a counterfeit-object Gettier-type case differently than in a matched case of justified true belief. In a large-scale, cross-cultural conceptual replication of Turri and colleagues’ (2015) Experiment 1 (N = 4,724) using a within-participants design and three vignettes across 19 geopolitical regions, we did find evidence for Gettier intuitions; participants were 1.86 times more likely to attribute knowledge to protagonists in standard cases of justified true belief than to protagonists in Gettier-type cases. These results suggest that Gettier intuitions may be detectable across different scenarios and cultural contexts. However, the size of the Gettier intuition effect did vary by vignette, and the Turri et al. (2015) vignette produced the smallest effect, which was similar in size to that observed in the original study. Differences across vignettes suggest epistemic intuitions may also depend on contextual factors unrelated to the criteria of knowledge, such as the characteristics of the protagonist being evaluated

Panoramic Ultrasound Measurement of the Vastus Medialis: A Validation Study with NASA

Background Quadriceps weakness and atrophy have been implicated in the pathogenesis of a variety of musculoskeletal conditions from knee osteoarthritis to patellofemoral pain syndrome. Quadriceps cross-sectional-area (CSA), and more specifically, vastus medialis (VM) CSA, has been shown to be an independent predictor of important clinical outcomes including pain and long-term function. Previous studies have used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as the gold standard to measure CSA, however there has been a recent expansion in research into the validity of ultrasound. Several groups have looked at larger muscle groups such as the entire quadriceps, but have reported variable accuracy with smaller muscles such as the VM. In partnership with NASA and the MMC physical therapy department, we set out to validate panoramic ultrasound measurements of the CSA of the distal VM compared to the gold standard, MRI, and to assess intra-and inter-rater reliability of ultrasound measurements using an existing NASA data set of matched images. Methods This validation study is a retrospective secondary analysis using US and MRI image pairs obtained from a 10-week study of non-weight-bearing adults conducted at a NASA facility. Both US and MRI images were acquired at multiple time points throughout the study from various locations on the right thigh. The most distal image of the thigh was used to outline the intermuscular border of the VM three times by each investigator to calculate CSA in both image modalities. Intraclass correlation coefficients, standard errors of the mean (SEM), and minimum detectable change were then calculated using SPSS software. Results Each investigator analyzed US and MRI image pairs from 24 participants in the parent study at a single time point. US demonstrated acceptable validity in measuring the CSA of the vastus medialis when compared against the gold standard, MRI with an Interclass Correlation (ICC) of 0.91 (95% CI -0.09-0.98) for researcher 1 and an ICC of 0.85 (95% CI -0.10-0.97) for researcher 2. The study showed acceptable inter-rater reliability for both MRI with an ICC of 0.97 (95% CI 0.70-0.99)) and US with an ICC of 0.98 (95% CI 0.95-0.99). The standard error of the mean (SEM) was calculated at 1.5 cm^2 and the minimum detectable change (MDC) was 4.15 cm^2. Bland-Altman plots were created and demonstrated acceptable agreement. Conclusions This study demonstrates that US is a valid and reliable tool to measure the CSA of the vastus medialis when compared to simultaneous measurements of the same subjects by MRI (gold standard). These measurements demonstrate acceptable criterion validity and inter-rater reliability. US offers a cost-effective means of measuring VM CSA, which can assist providers and physical therapists in determining the most appropriate plan of care for rehabilitation in the presence strength deficits